Before you click ‘FORWARD’ on that e-mail, read this

I don’t know if it is because I have been involved in the technology field for a couple of decades or if I just have too many e-mail addresses that too many people know. But somehow I seem to get pretty much every single e-mail rumour, conspiracy theory, warm & fuzzy slideshow and warning show up in my inbox at one time or another.

At first I think, Oh great, as if I have time for this. Then, usually, I figure that my friend, associate or distant cousin of someone I met on Facebook is looking out for me. They don’t want me to get mugged by some vagrant in a parking lot, become a victim of a gang initiation or want me to avoid that ‘mayonnaise’ in that fast food chicken sandwich because it might really be pus from a tumour.

I appreciate the thought and the concern—really, I do, when it is genuinely intended—but, folks, seriously, let’s not just accept everything that passes in front of our eyes. The near instant nature of e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and text messages makes it just too easy to pass along something that is more than a little silly; and if we would just pause for a second to think about it we’d realise just how silly it is.

Perhaps it is because I am a photographer but I also often am forwarded photos that seem too freaky/cool/unlikely to be true—and there is a very good reason for that: they usually are too freaky/cool/unlikely to be true.

Sure, occasionally I’ll come across a photo that is genuine and awesome (like THIS series of authentic photos of a lightning storm in the middle of a volcanic eruption). But that’s far less often than the pretty-obvious-to-me faked photos (’fauxtography’) like THIS one of tourists about to be eaten by a very familiar-looking shark.

I get these e-mails pretty frequently, in fact, in the last year or so I have been getting a lot more direct e-mails outright asking me if something is real, as if I have some sort of special Web.bs filter, which I guess, in a way, I do. I would say the majority of the time I can tell at first glance when something just isn’t legit. The rest of the time I can usually find out in less than 60 seconds with a well-worded Google search or, more likely, a visit to Snopes.com.

Snopes.com specialises in discerning fact from fiction. They research the topic at hand, often speaking directly with those purported to be involved. They will publish a photo and show how it was faked (like our not-so-hapless SCUBA-diving tourists).

So, the next time you’re just not sure if stingrays really do migrate en masse in the Gulf of Mexico, or if Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was denied access to Disneyland in 1959, check it out on Snopes.com.

And stop bothering me!